


you want a coffee? tequila maybe?

by yellowbeesknees



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Cheeks - Freeform, DPS, Dead Poets Society - Freeform, Gay Panic, M/M, awkward charlie, beret charlie, charlie is his teaching assistant, steven is an english teacher, sunglasses charlie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:14:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25112209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowbeesknees/pseuds/yellowbeesknees
Summary: Charlie Dalton just landed a job as an English TA (teaching assistant) at Welton, helping out his awfully familliar colleage, English teacher Steven Meeks. It doesn't take Charlie long to realise that Mr Steven Meeks is the guy who he had... sexual relations with at a bar a few weeks before, unfortunately or fortunately, Steven Meeks doesn't seem to remember him at all.
Relationships: Charlie Dalton/Steven Meeks
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44





	you want a coffee? tequila maybe?

Charlie can’t help but stare because this is the man who [hot breaths stolen from each other’s lips] he can’t be, he seriously can’t be [fingers digging into warm skin] because that would be absurd [lips hovering over each other, lost in the mesmerising incandescence of throbbing club lights] and Charlie can’t begin to imagine how this is possible, that [the taxi drifting under yellow street lights as he lifted a hand to his lips, dancing through the night sky, lullabied to sleep by the soft drone of the engine] the man who left him outside the club still leaving him [sobbing for breath, fingers tangling in belt loops] he blinks again, because seriously, Charlie knew his luck was this bad but really this, this couldn’t be [brass buckle, button pops] it really had to be the worst luck in the world [fingers tracing under the loose shirt collar] and it really couldn’t be happening to him right now, but [lips soft on neck, hand gentle on thighs] guy is standing right in front of him, expression blank and confused [eyes lustful, deep, comprehending behind glasses shimmering in the toilet lights] but it is. It fucking is.

“Hello?” he says, the man with the soft hands Charlie knows too intimately already, and he thinks Glasses must have said it once already because he looks faintly worried and one second from clicking his fingers in front of Charlie’s nose.

“Hi… oh sorry, I’m Charlie Dalton, they’ve brought me in to teach joint with you?” He tries not to stare too hard at Glasses because fuck, he can already tell that the guy doesn’t remember him at all, and he doesn’t know if he should bring it up.

The man he drunkenly had a sexual encounter with in some grimy club toilets extends his hand, wiggling his nose to readjust serious horn-rimmed glasses. “Steven Meeks, yeah, I believe we are sharing a class this year.” 

Charlie stares down at the hand which… he takes it. “Sorry I’m a bit late, I got lost. It’s my first day.” He laughed nervously, desperately hoping that none of his other colleagues would be memorable to him like this. “Big building.” His laugh trails of lamely.

He gets a quick smile but then Steven Meeks, Glasses, [fervent kisses goodnight on the cold, pink, purple, blue, yellow, lit pavement outside not knowing each other’s names], walks away down the corridor. Charlie watches, shaking on the precipice of following [murmured drunken nonsense breathed in each other’s lungs] but unsure if that’s the right cue to read. [Freckles on shoulder, blurry through alcohol kisses] half turns expectantly at the end of the corridor. “Our classroom,” he says, gesturing to a door out of Charlie’s sight. He disappears. He leans a little out over the cliff edge for a moment, then he follows, abstract mind displaced, hiding in grimy yellow lit bathrooms, music pulsing below the door, half caught glimpses of them in a shattered mirror [only he matters, half nervous smile from the bar still pressed against his cocky smirk]. 

For a moment he still teeters, contemplating going into retirement on his first day, then he follows Steven Meeks. The classroom, their classroom, is full of light, three large windows occupying most of the wall opposite the door. There’s a desk with an old fashioned blackboard on the wall behind it where Steven Meeks is standing, shuffling through papers. It’s an English class, English literature, and the faces of old poets and writers adorn the same wall as the door, quotes from Macbeth printed in large red letters, Maya Angelou smiling down, copies of her poetry plastered around her in a frantic mess of words, beside her Jane Austen’s book characters stand, screen-caps taken from the many TV adaptations and films from over the years, faded in the sunlight. On the window sills, some slightly bedraggled plants, almost completely abandoned over summer curl down the wall, long leaves reaching for some shade in the American heat.

There’s no desk for him, but he won’t need one. The students tables will be his desks, they aren’t set out in authoritarian rows but collaboratively pushed together in some ingenious desperation to promote team work. That’s where he’ll be sitting, because the current teacher, Steven Meeks [hands run through hair], needs a bit of help an ‘assistant’ to help those in his class who struggle with the fundamentals while Mr Meeks tries to teach them beyond what they already don’t understand.

“Sorry if it’s a bit of a mess.” Steven Meeks grabs his coffee [shot glass spilt with a giggle], peers inside it, shrugs, then takes it to the plants to pour into the dry, cracked earth. “I’m not used to having co-workers in my classroom.”

Charlie wonders if he’s been pushed on Steven Meeks like a burden, or if his help was something asked for. “I don’t mind,” he murmurs, “messy is fine.” He removes his sunglasses and paces to the window. He never had been good at reading and understanding in his youth, not until he had Mr J. Keating for a year and finally saw that he could enjoy learning and that he could teach other people to enjoy learning. His last job, working as a teaching assistant a few cities over, had been just that until he had been made redundant. Not many schools had the funds for teaching assistants like Charlie, he was expendable, a luxury item in the realm of teaching, but looking out over the grounds of Welton, he had the definite idea that here, luxuries were indulged on.

“You want a coffee?” Steven Meeks [you want another shot?] was holding his empty cup by the handle. “I can show you where the staff room is for this block if you like, before the kids get here.”

He takes another moment to collect his thoughts, they’re too full of [goodnight kiss in a drunken stupor] and realises he must look very under qualified for the teaching job, what with all the thinking he has to do. “Yeah, yeah that would be great thanks.”

They walk down the corridor in tandem, synchronised even though one of them doesn’t remember the last dance class, Steven Meeks humming something softly under his breath in the frustrated tone of repetition which someone who vaguely remembers the snatch of a song might mumble, trying to think of where they heard it before. Charlie sincerely hopes Glasses doesn’t remember where he heard it, because it was playing when Charlie bought him a drink at the bar with a cheeky smirk. “You don’t have to be nervous you know.”

His eyes jump up, blinking at Steven. “What do you mean?”

“About the kids, you look a bit out of it. Most of them are nice, and anyway I’m the one who’ll be dealing with any misbehaving.”

Charlie nods, smiles at him with all the gratitude he can muster. “You ever shared a class before?”

“One or twice, some of the kids have their own personal TA, you know?” He pushes in to a door on their right with his shoulder, waving Charlie through passed him. “I asked for you… I mean… I mean I asked for a TA… not you specifically.” He pauses. “So you don’t have to feel… I don’t know, like you’re stepping on my turf or whatever.” He laughs, nodding to a brightly dressed woman by the water cooler in greeting and crossing the room to the faded coffee machine.

Grinning at the scuffed, threadbare carpet, Charlie glances at him out of the corner of his eye. “Not that I’d be particularly intimidated if I was stepping on your patch.”

Steven Meeks snorts, shooting him a mock glare. “If you’re not careful I’ll be sending you to the head’s office. How d’you like your coffee?” [What’s your favourite, I wanna buy you a drink. An ecstatically drunken smile.]

Their first class isn’t bad. They get on with the work well enough and Charlie is impressed with how much Mr Meeks reminds him of Mr Keating. He sits with a young lady called Freya who mumble repeats all the words on page after Charlie says them in a slow voice when she can’t quite read it. “Longevity,” he says quietly,”longevity” she whispers after him, jotting it down on her ‘Dictionary List’. At the end of the lesson, while the others complete the group task he helps her find the words in the dictionary. Mr Meeks approaches them and nods approvingly, sending Freya a big thumbs up and grinning at Charlie.

The next group is worse behaviour wise, and Charlie has to repress a laugh as a paper aeroplane glides softly through the AC blasted air. He helps the table at the front of the room make character profiles for Jay Gatsby, Nick Carroway, and Daisy, trying to help them explore the text deeply like Mr Keating used to.

“You remind me a lot of my old teacher,” says Charlie as they start their single free period of the day, taking off the lid of his yogurt, leaning back on the chair he’s pulled up to Steven Meeks’s desk.

He’s regarded from behind glasses no longer stained with bright disco lights. “You remind me of one of my English teachers too, he left though, was only there for half a year.”

“Ours too, Mr Keating was – ”

Steven chokes. “What!”

“What?”

“Mr Keating!”

Charlie frowns, because seriously this day is getting weirder by the second. “You also had Dead Poets Society Keating? Obsessed with Walt Whitman?”

He grins. “What the fuck? Yes!”

“At my school he got kicked out for holding illegal meetings after school hours talking about poetry, even though school was literally locked up.”

“At ours he got kicked out for vandalising school property, had us ripping out half the pages of the text books provided.”

Charlie laughed. “I can’t believe it. No… actually I can… I’m pretty sure he’s been kicked out of every school in America.”

His first weeks at Welton is better than he could’ve expected, despite his shameful, blushing secret of Steven Meeks, Glasses, at the club. The students are nice (at least to him, he gets to be fun Mr Dalton not stricter Mr Meeks) and most of them are willing to learn (although some of them take a bit of cajoling and entreating), the other staff he interacts with occasionally when going to grab coffees for him and Steven aren’t too snobbish about the fact he’s only a TA, and the coffee isn’t the worst stuff he’s ever tasted, Steven Meeks is nice as well, very nice, they spend afternoons reminiscing about Mr Keating and sharing stories and jokes and jabs about the students that most annoy them, as long as Charlie can keep his mind out of the gutter. 

It’s a Friday when the inevitable happens, it’s raining, the grey light pervading the classroom, the lights switched off by some kid on their way home for a very funny and ingenious prank, and neither teacher nor teaching assistant has bothered to turn it on. The plants, rejuvenated from the close care of their now more permanent owners now summer had truly disappeared into the folds of the past, rain running thickly down the window pane beneath the broken gutter. It must be something about the dark, Charlie muses, that Steven Meeks is looking at him with confused deja vu, like the dull flickering lighting of club bathrooms, when the dull yellow glow had fluttered out for a moment, its motion sensors going out. Maybe that triggers the alcohol dam to splinter a little down the foundations.

He tries not to look at Steven too directly, instead trying to focus on the quiz sheet he’s meant to be marking, all he can see [sweaty bodies whirling, a myriad of colours and cloth] and he’s blinking back the fear that this is about to ruin everything [warm fingers brushing his as he takes the shot glass] and Steven is still looking at him. There’s a ghostly sheen to the light, and it’s like the dark of a corridor in a club, just out of reach from the pulsing strobe lights. He taps his pen nervously. “You want a coffee?”

Steven doesn’t reply, but it looks like his mind is reeling. [You want a tequila?]

He dares a look into his eyes and they blink with final understanding. [Eyes swallow eyes, lips dancing over each other, hovering in airspace, souls drinking from souls] he opens his mouth, closes it again, glances to the window, to the door, back to Charlie [hands running up his back under his shirt.]

“Yeah,” Charlie mumbles, “I know.”

The blush that sinks into his skin stains his neck, cheek, nose, he looks grey and pallid in the downcast light. “That’s… that’s why… oh… that’s why you were so out of it… you know… on the first day… I… I’m not sure if I’m supposed to apologise… or?”

He lets out a confused laugh. “Why apologise? It was just a bit of a shock to see you, honestly I’m glad you didn’t recognise me, that would have been too awkward.”

“But we… oh my god. I am so sorry.”

Charlie swallows. “This doesn’t mean you want me to quit… does it?”

He’s still staring, mouth hanging open. “You’re Beret in a Club guy, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.” He smacks his forehead with the palm of his hand. “You wore sunglasses and a beret in a club and then I sucked your dick in the toilets. How am I not more observant?”

He blinks. “You were Glasses for the record.”

“Wearing glasses isn’t a choice, wearing a beret to a club is.” Steven Meeks grins. “I don’t want you to quit.”

“No?”

“No.” He grins again. “No.”

Charlie bites his lip. “For the record, I liked Glasses a lot.”

“For the record I was looking for Beret in a Club guy everywhere, except here obviously, stupidly of me, of course my new TA would be…. Ugh.”

“You still want that coffee.” Charlie lays his hand flat on the table and lifts his gaze with as much magnetic energy as he can muster. “Or were you looking for a tequila.”

The next Monday, Steven and Charlie try not to brush passed each other every time they patrol the classroom, try not to gaze too longingly, try not to grin too flirtatiously. 

[Knuckles graze knuckles on the way to hands lifted in the air, a plea for help on understanding Walt Whitman; fingertips clutching coffee cups run over each other; leaning over a desk and whispering warm words that look professional against Glasses’s cheek; hands held on the way to the car park; a swift raise of the eyebrows as Mr Pitts from the design block notices them; warm domestic golden light, bringing them home.]

**Author's Note:**

> this was kinda dumb but i loved it, thank you for reading :)


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